Building Blocks of Literacy
A series of Early Level Literacy webinar recordings, suitable for anyone new to teaching Early level, anyone with a remit of supporting children at Early level literacy learning, or any manager who oversees the Early level in primary school are now available to view.
Please view the Guide below for more information and instructions on how to access the resources
Useful Literacy and English Links
If you don’t already access the National Literacy Professional Learning Community (PLC), this is a one stop shop where you can access professional learning resources, links to relevant research, a up to date calendar of literacy events and a range of support materials and resources.
The National Literacy PLC can be accessed via Glow at National Literacy PLC.
There is also a professional learning community (PLC) specifically for school librarians or those with a school library lead. The National Schools Libraries PLC can be accessed at National School Libraries PLC.
Introduction from Laura McGinlay
My name is Laura McGinlay and I joined Education Scotland in April 2021 as Education Officer for Literacy and English. I work within the South West regional team.
My role is to:
- Provide literacy development support within individual schools, local authorities and across the SWEIC.
- Develop, co-ordinate and deliver professional learning to meet the needs of practitioners across the South West.
- Contribute to collaborative networks and groups.
- Identify, share and signpost effective practice and expertise across the SWEIC and beyond.
Although my role involves working across the SWEIC, I can offer support to individual schools/clusters so please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Prior to joining Education Scotland, I worked as literacy development officer for The Highland Council. Before becoming a literacy development officer, I was principal teacher within a primary school in Inverness. I started my teaching career in East Renfrewshire before moving to Renfrewshire council.
The best part of my role is learning from others and having the opportunity to share literacy expertise and effective practice. Practitioners have many demands on their time, so I believe collaboration is key to continually improving practice and learning from one another.
Your practice in the Spotlight
Stoorie Stories – This month’s spotlight is a case study of the North Ayrshire literacy across learning initiative ‘Stoorie Stories’.
Stoorie Stories is a Secondary school literacy across learning initiative based on local heritage areas and historical figures. Angela Noble (North Ayrshire’s English & Literacy Coordinator) worked with their Information, Culture and Heritage Team to plan an exciting initiative that would take Literacy ‘off the page’, whilst incorporating local history. Garnock Community Campus were approached as a pilot school since Debbie Gardner (Depute) had already begun driving literacy across learning forward, using Cornell note making as a focus.
The case study provides information of the context for the project, its implementation and its impact. This LINK to a Wakelet provides a bank of resources/approaches and this LINK provides Stoorie Stories Case Studies (Glow Login required). The delivery kit is currently ‘under construction’ but a few tasters have been added. Garnock Staff are developing planners to support the rich assessment writing tasks. The project will be piloted across another five secondary schools in North Ayrshire in 2021-22.
Angela is happy to discuss ‘Stoorie Stories’ and how individual schools can adapt the approach to suit their own teaching and learning environment. She can be contacted at gw14nobleangela@ea.n-ayrshire.sch.uk.
